Cuts to number of Met Police officers could be mitigated says London Assembly

Potential cuts to the number of officers in the Metropolitan Police could be significantly less severe than feared, according to an analysis by the London Assembly.

Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said in December that the force was facing a £450mn funding shortfall, which could possibly require cutting 2,300 officers in the coming financial year.

But an analysis by the Assembly’s budget and performance committee suggests that any such cuts could be drastically mitigated.

In a letter to Sir Sadiq Khan, the committee’s Conservative chairman, Neil Garratt, pointed out that the latest version of the mayor’s budget includes an extra £78mn for “police officer pay”.

Neither the mayor’s office, nor the Met, is saying at this stage how exactly that additional funding will be used, or what it could mean for total officer numbers.

In his letter, Garratt said that the extra cash nonetheless “suggests that the planned reduction in officer numbers may be somewhat mitigated”.

He added: “For example, we were told that the budget assumption of the average cost of a police officer [in a single year] was £77,000. The additional £78m proposed funding for police officer pay could therefore fund around a thousand police officers, and reduce the previous planned reduction of 2,300 to 1,300, depending on the timescales involved.

“However, these are our own estimates which are not reliable given the limited information available. MOPAC [the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime] has not provided an official account of its planned officer reductions. We urge it to do so as quickly as possible.”

Dan Worsley, the Met’s chief finance officer, told the committee earlier this month that Scotland Yard was still “working through what the [Government’s] additional police grant monies means for us, and what the conditions are attached, in terms of what that means for our net recruitment plans, and so I don’t have an end-point [of officer numbers] for the 2025/26 financial year, until we’ve worked through how that money will be applied”.

A spokesman for Sir Sadiq said in response to the committee’s analysis that “no final decisions to reduce any services or officer numbers at the Met have been made” and stressed that “the mayor is working closely with the new Government and the Commissioner, with ongoing constructive talks with ministers about the funding the Met needs to ensure we can continue building a safer London for everyone”.

He also said that, “in setting out the worst-case scenario, the Met is not proposing any savings in areas that have direct contact with the public, like emergency response or neighbourhood teams”.

He added: “Neighbourhood and frontline policing remain a key priority and the Met will continue to invest in reforming how they fight crime locally.”

Letter from Neil Garratt AM Chairman of the Budget and Performance Committee (pdf).

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